Overclocking my E6600 Past 3.22 ghz

[TStedel]

I am planning on getting water cooling for my system, and I want to atleast have the ability to overclock enough to make it worthwhile. I have looked at the threads, I've looked at other overclocking websites, and I've done a little research. So I'm basically familiar with the basic concepts of overclocking, and most of the things mean in the BIOS.

However, I've run into a little problem with my computer. I am indeed using stock cooling, but at this point, I just want to test how high I could overclock. I can get t o 1433 fsb, or 358 bus without much problem(vcore 1.4625, 40-41c idle, 52-53c load), and this is around 3.22 ghz. This is stable on prime95 for about an hour that I allowed it, so I'm assuming this is a good speed. (Two prime instances). However, in order to justify my future water cooling expense, I want to be able to to overclock to about 4ghz, or near it.

I tested at FSB frequencies between 1433 and 1492, and all would post and boot correctly, but anything above 1440 was not stable on Prime95 at any voltage.

The problem I'm running into is if I go between 1500-1599 fsb, it will simply not post correctly (I've read on the forums that the Conroes are weirdly unstable between 360-399 bus) so I switched to 1600. This is 3.6 ghz, and it posts correctly, but it will never go to the windows loading screen. At first, when my vcore was too low, it would do nothing, but after a while, raising the vcore in small increments forced it to start restarting instead of just hanging. I'm a little bit cautious about going above this just yet, and in fact, I was cautious about a lot of speeds beforehand. During these tests, I underclocked my RAM inorder to isolate what the problem could be(667 - 533). It doesn't blue screen, it just hangs, so what I'm asking is:

Will a different cooling method change this? I am quite sure that it's not my memory causing these problems, and I am very cautious about raising the voltage any higher (fsb 1.5v, cpu 1.52625v). I stopped trying 1600 fsb when I hit 1.52625v. Also, for those that may be mortified that I'm doing this on stock, I'm not planning on using it at this speed, as I'm sure my temps under load would go through the roof. I am however trying to make sure that it would boot at all at these, and that water cooling would actually help. I don't know if it would be my power supply either. I am not sure of all the symptoms, and to what they are associated. Thanks

E6600 - Stock Cooling
eVGA 680i, most recent bios rev
7900 GT KO
Corsair 667 ValueRam(soon to be changed to high quality ddr2-800 modules) 5-5-5-15
600w power supply

 

[Blouge]

>anything above 1440 was not stable

I'm guessing your memory is set for 1:1. 1440 rated FSB is quad pumped 360 FSB, which means your memory is at 360 MHz. In other words you are using DDR2-720. Probably your "667 Value Ram" can't handle this.

>I want to be able to to overclock to about 4ghz

Wow, I don't know much about water cooling but good luck!

>I've read on the forums that the Conroes are weirdly unstable between 360-399 bus

The problem is that the Northbridge (memory controller) is overclocked by (360-266)/266 = 35% = too much. When you use 400 fsb, the chipset changes the "strap" to 1333, so the NB is then overclocked only (400-1333/4)/(1333/4) = 20%. There's a drop in performance at 400 fsb but it does allows you to go higher.

>I am very cautious about raising the voltage any higher (fsb 1.5v, cpu 1.52625v)

Me too. Are you sure your CPU will survive for long on those voltages? I want at least a few years out of mine. I also have E6600 and I tried 1.45 vCore only briefly because it scares me. I'm trying to overclock with 1.3125 BIOS (1.24-1.28 real) V which is 0.0375 above the stock setting and its unstable at 800x4=3.2 GHz. My Core Temps are typically 23 - 44 (at Orthos 9) and NB is 26 C or so, so I think temp is OK. Maybe my CPU is a dud? Lately Orthos and even Windows Explorer have been shutting down with "this application needs to close" but the Orthos calculations never fail. Maybe Windows needs to be reinstalled?

>power supply

It's probably OK. 600 W is more than enough unless you have two very high-end video cards.